We’ve welcomed visitors from 57 countries and 48 U.S. states so far

By David McElroy · July 8, 2011

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at just how far-flung the audience for this site has been so far. It was just eight weeks ago today when I opened the digital doors to the place, but people have already made thousands of visits from 57 different countries around the world.

There have also been visitors from 48 of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia. Vermont and South Dakota have been the only two U.S. states missing for weeks. What are you guys waiting for?

Even though I can’t personally identify who comes to visit or exactly where you’re coming from or anything of that nature, the system does give me general information. For instance, I know that the U.S. state sending the most visitors is Alabama, which makes sense considering that I live here and lots of people here known me.

After my home state, the top 10 U.S. states in numbers of visits so far have been Texas, New York, Florida, California, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania. (Massachusetts barely missed the cut.)

From around the world, here are the countries represented so far, in order of the number of visits: United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Paraguay, Ireland, Spain, India, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Uruguay, Egypt, Russia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Netherlands, Argentina, Guatemala, Denmark, France, South Korea, Malaysia, Finland, Sweden, Serbia, Philippines, Portugal, Czech Republic, Nepal, Bahrain, Belgium, Taiwan, Indonesia, Ecuador, Lebanon, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Fiji, Bolivia, Chile, Pakistan, Norway, Israel, Algeria, China, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Bangladesh and Venezuela.

I have to be honest and tell you that I’ve been stunned and very, very happy to see you guys from far away from me. I mean, it’s one thing when my friends and family show up, because I can sort of guilt them into taking a look. But you folks in Fiji and Nepal and Slovakia weren’t high on my list of countries to expect visitors from. Thank you for proving that my vision was too small.

I sincerely appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to read anything I’ve written over the last eight weeks. Thanks to those who’ve clicked on ads along the way, because doing that — for things you’re interested in — contributes a few dollars through ad sales to pay the costs of the site. I also appreciate those of you who’ve made comments and sent me personal email. (If you’ve written and I haven’t replied, please forgive me. I’m behind on answering everyone.) It’s humbled me that enough people have cared about what I’m doing to check it out even once, much less come back again and again, as so many people have done.

I’ve been introduced to some amazing people because of this site and I’ve run into people who are just as interested as I am in changing the world for the better and building competitive governance in the post-statist world. I’m appreciative for the people I’ve met, and I’m looking forward to seeing who comes to my attention next.

Thank you for your support. I’m very grateful that you keep coming back. And if you know anyone in Vermont or South Dakota, ask ’em to log on here soon, please. I’d like to finish coloring in my map.

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It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

I just found out that a long-time Facebook friend died a few days ago. I never met Tom Ender, but reading his posts and interacting with him over the years made me feel as though I knew him. He was a kind and gentle man who was also a fierce and principled individualist. When his long-time wife, Julie, died several years ago, it broke his heart. About a year ago, he posted an old photo from their wedding long ago and wrote, “18 months ago, Julie passed from this world. I believe we will meet again, though I don’t know details of how.” As I mourn the death of this gentle and brilliant man, my fondest hope is that he and Julie are together again by now. Goodbye, Tom.

When Francesca Montanaro’s school shut down in March due to fears about the new new coronavirus, she had nowhere to go. Francesca’s mother is a nurse working long hours in New York City. The grandparents who would otherwise have provided child-care were old enough to be vulnerable to the bug, so they were out. That meant Francesca has spent the last few months with her dad at his pizza shop in the Bronx. In this six-minute piece from Radio Diaries and NPR, we take a look at what it’s been like to be a bright and typical 11-year-old thrust into a completely different world. She puts pizza boxes together and answers phones. She’s even learned to make perfect pizzas. I found the story touching. It reminds me of the degree to which children used to learn more about the real world than they do today. Even though she won’t follow in the pizza-making footsteps of her father, I’ll bet this will be one of the defining experiences of her childhood, one that she will treasure for years to come.

I noticed three instances over the weekend of people talking about Donald Trump’s “campaign of hate.” I wanted to correct them — because they misunderstand this narcissist — but I knew they wouldn’t get my point. It’s not that I’m defending him, because what he does is worse than hate. You simply have to understand the way narcissists think to understand him. Trump doesn’t hate. It’s worse than hate. He’s indifferent and angry with anyone who doesn’t obey him and worship him, those who don’t give him what’s called “narcissistic supply.” People believe that Trump hates blacks or Hispanics or foreigners or whatever group which he’s seen as hating. It’s true that he experiences rage at people who will not give him what he wants, but he’s not in touch enough with his real self to feel real hatred, much less to feel real love. He’s like a vampire who sucks all the available praise and adoration from any group of people — any way he can get it. He doesn’t love rural, blue-collar white folks, but their adoration gives him what he craves. He’s not emotionally mature enough even to hate. For a narcissist, people are simply objects to manipulate, depending on what he can get from them. Trump’s indifference is far worse than hatred. This isn’t ideological or political. It’s pathological. He’s not mature enough to hate.

The decline of modern culture can be seen clearly by looking at what passes for public discourse. There was a time when people who wanted their ideas accepted made rational arguments. It was assumed that most people were bright enough and rational enough to evaluate those arguments — and a surprising number of them really were. Today, the arguments are made in the form of irrational and simplistic graphics called “memes.” Because these graphics can’t convey complex or nuanced information, they present dumbed-down presentations of positions which are stunningly juvenile and seem designed to offend rather than to convince. We have regressed from books and dense pamphlets to a level more like that of angry kindergartners making crayon-scrawled hate notes to send to other children. Reason no longer plays a role in public discourse, and this signals the coming fall of this society.

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